Railings for stairs have been well-known for as long as there have been residences of more than one level joined by stair steps. Generally, the stair rail includes a hand rail attached to a newell post at each end of the stairs, and a plurality of spaced vertical balusters are attached at their upper ends to the hand rail, and at their lower ends to the stair steps. More recent designs have included a shoe rail attached to the lower ends of the balusters, so that an entire stair rail section can be prefabricated and brought into the building and incorporated in place as a unit, rather than to custom fit each baluster to steps at different levels. Even this type of prefabrication necessitated the construction of each stair rail section as a unique unit because of the fact that stair steps are constructed with an infinite selection of pitches, i.e., the angle between horizontal and the line of rise or fall of the stairs. In still more recent times there have been offered designs which can be adjusted to any pitch and secured in place. These designs provide a single construction unit which is usable for any stair design. Typical of such designs are those in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,626,438; 3,804,374; 4,138,094; 4,403,767; 4,408,749; 4,421,302; 4,505,456; and 4,533,121. While these designs are operable for the intended purpose they are much more complicated than is necessary.
It is an object of this invention to provide a novel adjustable stair rail section. It is another object of this invention to provide an adjustable stair rail section that is simple and inexpensive to construct. A specific object is the provision of a stair rail section which is easily and totally collapsible for ready shipping and/or storage. Another specific object is to provide an improved stair rail section which is universally adaptable to any rake of stair or useable on a horizontal platform. Still other objects will become apparent from the more detailed description which follows.